If prices remain relatively low, natural gas could fuel as much as 54% of all U.S. electricity generation by 2050, according to the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2019. Conversely, if natural gas prices rise, gas-fired generation could fall to 21% by 2050.

Facing a shrinking reserve margin, Texas utility regulators have ordered the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to make a change to its “operating reserve demand curve," which will increase real-time prices when power supplies are limited.

Grand Haven, Michigan, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, expects to decide later this year what will replace the city's 70.4-MW J.B. Sims coal-fired power plant after it generates its last electrons on June 1, 2020, according to David Walters, general manager of the local public power utility.

Nebraska Public Power District's embrace of hydrogen as a conversion fuel at the public power entity's 125-MW coal-fired Sheldon Station Unit 2 could lead to a collaboration with Finland-based Wartsila to convert hydrogen into methanol to use as fuel in Wartsila engines.

Commenting on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to replace the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the American Public Power Association on Oct. 31 said that it supports EPA’s proposal to establish heat rate improvement technologies as the best system of emission reductions for coal-fired utility boilers, the revision of certain Clean Air Act’s section 111(d) implementing regulations, and supports the role states have in setting units specific performance standards.

FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. notified the PJM Interconnection of its plans to deactivate four fossil-fuel generating plants in 2021 and 2022. The plants represent a total of 4,017 megawatts of generating capacity.